Fall color of a Black Oak

...mouse click to enlarge... In November of 2005, I made a road trip into lower elevations of the Sierra Nevada in order to try and capture a good specimen of black oak, quercus kelloggii, in fall color. The species along with big leaf maples, are the last deciduous trees in our mountains with attractive leaf color changes each fall. Black oak leaves tend to change to a dull reddish brown or yellow thus not the more impressive colors that one sees with aspen or dogwood. However if one explores enough, there will be an occasional unusual tree with more firy red leaf color. I put in a lot of mountain road driving miles and hikes into areas with promise, however the tree in this image was by far the best I've ever come across. This was at a remote area Calaveras Big Trees State Park I hiked to with the Mokelumne River at right in the background. Often an impossible limitation shooting trees within forest is adjacent trees and terrain. Here I ended up squeezed against an incense cedar as far back as possible. Another issue with such subjects is light down in a forest more often on sunny days is a harsh contrasty mix of sun and shadows. Fortunately when I ventured upon this subject, the midday sky above was optimally bright with thin overcast clouds providing excellent soft light conditions. I waited until a moment of stronger light illuminated just this oak in order for it to cause its transluscent backlit leaves to glow. I used my 90mm Caltar large format lens to expose the 4x5 sheet of Provia 100F transparency film. The image is available on my below home page gallery as a 32x24 inch Lightjet fine art print. For additional information on this image see link. David Senesac http://www.davidsenesac.com